POEM FOR TODAY Carolyn Marie Rodgers

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/rodgers/rodgers.htm

Poem for Some Black Women

©1992 Carolyn M. Rodgers

i am lonely,
all the people i know
i know too well

there was comfort in that
at first but now we know each others miseries
              too well.

we are
         lonely women, who spend time waiting for
         occasional flings
we live with fear.
we are lonely.
we are talented, dedicated, well read
         BLACK, COMMITTED,

we are lonely,
we understand the world problems
Black women’s problems with Black men
         but all
we really understand is
         lonely.

when we laugh,
we are so happy to laugh
we cry when we laugh
         we are lonely.
we are busy people
always doing things
fearing getting trapped in rooms
loud with empty…
                      yet
knowing the music of silence/hating it/hoarding it
loving it/treasuring it,
        it often birthing our creativity
                       we are lonely

being soft and being hard
supporting our selves, earning our own bread
soft/hard/hard/soft
knowing that need must not show
                      will frighten away
knowing that we must
walk back-wards nonchalantly on our tip-toeness
         into
happiness,
        if only for stingy moments

we know too much
we learn to understand everything,
to make too much sense out
of the world,
of pain
                    of lonely…


we buy clothes, we take trips,
we wish, we pray, we meditate, we curse, we crave, we coo,
we caw,

          we need ourselves sick, we need, we need
we lonely we grow tired of tears we grow tired of fear
we grow tired but must al-ways be soft and not too serious…
               not too smart not too bitchy not too sapphire
               not too dumb not too not too not too
a little less a little more
                             add here detract there
                                   .lonely.

Do you think a person can have a full life and still be lonely?
What is loneliness?  What causes loneliness?